Self Identification and Sel Empowerment in Kincaid's Autobiography of my Mother

Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of my Mother is the story of Xuela Claudette Richardson, the daughter of a Carib Indian mother and half Scot-half African father, set in postcolonial Dominica. Narrated by a 70 year old Xuela reflecting back on her life, the novel touches upon themes of maternal loss, paternal abandonment and rejection through society, and how they affect her search for self identification amidst a loveless existence. My goal in this essay is to describe how Xuela’s search for identity is interlinked with her quest for power in a post colonial setting, this power being of a personal nature rather than a political or social one.

My arguments include the impact of loss of her mother, effects of post colonialism, her attempt to create a third identity in a colonial island, her relationship with her father, her openness to sexuality as a means of liberation and empowerment, her incapability of loving and a fear of abandonment, and finally, her preoccupation with Death.

The story begins with the statement “My mother died the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and eternity; at my back there was always a bleak, black wind” (Kincaid 3). Xuela’s mother, herself an orphan, dies during childbirth, leaving her a motherless child with no link to her ancestral heritage. Her father, seeing her as a burden, abandons her by leaving her in care of his laundress, a bitter victim of post colonialism, who is unable to treat others kindly, including her own children. The loss of her mother has a profound impact on Xuela and becomes the central fixation of her life, which she repeatedly states throughout the novel. She defines her existence with the loss of her mother and as a result,...

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...will. You keep declaring that you are in full possession, which is to say you are on guard" (Ferguson 184).

Xuela lives in no fear of the unknown. She accepts her fate as one of the ‘defeated’ and therefore has nothing more to lose from life. She has already lost her mother. She also accepts that she has nothing to gain from life, and this knowledge coupled with the angry stubbornness that derives itself from hopelessness allows Xuela to not fall from the blows life offers. She searches for the power and strength to stand up. Her intention is not to fight back but simply persevere, long enough to be claimed by Death.

WORKS CITED

Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1996.

Ferguson, Moira. "A Lot of Memory: An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid." The Kenyon

Review 16:1 (1994). 163-188.